Coffee With: Kathy Jones
In this occasional new series, we sit down for a chat with a successful woman to discover what she learnt along her, often unexpected, career path. First up is Kathy Jones (skim-decaf flat-white), who worked as a teacher and in the construction industry before founding her own business, KJA, in 2001. The company, which specialises in community consultation, stakeholder engagement and strategic communications, grew to 75 staff before Kathy sold it in 2018.
Did you always plan on becoming a business owner?
Not at all. I started out as a teacher and later joined the construction industry before a brief stint in the public sector during the Sydney Olympics. When I decided to leave and work for myself, I thought it was something I would do for a couple of years before looking around for another full-time job. I couldn’t have imagined that I would end up running a business with 75 employees.
Was that first step from sole trader to business owner challenging?
Hiring my first full-time staff member was almost an accident. She was working for a state government minister who resigned; her chief of staff, who I knew, called me and asked if I would take her on. I didn’t have any work for her but I knew she was a great operator, so I took a chance. At the same time, another communications professional I knew and respected decided to leave her job, and I took her on, too. Until then I had only developed strategies for clients; when some of those clients asked if I could help implement them, I didn’t have the time, but with staff that changed.
What’s your top tip for managing staff?
Leadership is so important. It’s about empowering people to allow them to be part of your journey, being generous, being clear about what you need from people. That’s how you bring people along with you. But staff will also come and go, and you can’t take that personally. That was a lesson I had to learn.
Is hiring good staff hard?
I have a good instinct for people, so I did fairly well. I look for four characteristics when hiring: I want people who can write, because that shows they can communicate, who have good common sense, who genuinely like people and they also have to have to have a sense of humour.
Tell us about one person who had a big impact on you and your business.
When my business started growing, I was just responding to demand in the market – and there was a lot of demand. We were growing like topsy but we didn’t have any systems in place and the security of the whole business still rested on me. Another business owner I knew had recently worked with a professional mentor who helped him put a company structure in place, so I engaged his services. He was a huge help. I’m not a process person, but he helped me put systems in place, including performance measurement systems. That in turn helped us predict where the business was going, where we needed more resources – and that forward planning helped us grow the business to the next stage.
Every business goes through downturns. How did you deal with those?
Adversity can be a great spur. Every new growth stage of my business came out of adversity. Take the GFC. I had to make some people redundant, and I never wanted to be in that situation again, so I looked at ways to make the business more secure going forwards.
What’s one skill every business owner needs?
Negotiation skills. The more you negotiate, the better you get at it. One of my mottos is, there’s always a deal to be done. I’ve never been driven by squeezing every last dollar out of a client – it’s about having a shared outcome which both parties can feel comfortable with. You don’t want anyone to walk away feeling that they’re the loser.
Why did you decide to sell your business?
I’d been doing it on my own for a long time. The alternative was to take on a partner; I even had someone prepared to invest. But I didn’t want to have to share the decision-making, of having to compromise. Selling the business doesn’t mean I’ve retired. I’m on several boards, I’m doing some advisory work, I’ve created a business in London and I’m talking with several UK companies about bringing them out here. I’m always looking for the next business opportunity.
Interview_ Ute Junker
Photo_ Chevanon/Pexels